Former Archbishop Rembert
Weakland walks away past the altar after his service where he
gave his apology at Mater Christi Chapel at the Cousins
Catholic Center on May 31, 2002. Weakland, who retired in 2002
in a spectacular fall from grace after acknowledging that he
used $450,000 in church funds in a failed attempt to silence a
former male lover, will be moving by Sept. 1 from his
Milwaukee condo to the St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pa.

Weakland, 87 and increasingly frail, has told friends he
will be moving by Sept. 1 from his Milwaukee condo to the St.
Vincent Archabbey, a community of monks in Latrobe, Pa., about
40 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

A group of local priests is planning a farewell luncheon
in July, an event that is already drawing criticism from abuse
survivors.

"It's an opportunity to express our thanks and
appreciation, and to say farewell and God bless you as you go
to the next phase in your life," said Father David Cooper
of St. Matthias Parish, the head of the local priests alliance
that is organizing the send-off.

"He's leaving behind here an enormous amount of
unresolved and unhealed pain that he is unfortunately directly
responsible for," said Isely.

Repeated efforts to reach Weakland at his home and by
telephone were unsuccessful.

Twelve years after his retirement — with the
archdiocese mired in a nearly 4-year-old bankruptcy, in large
part because of Weakland's actions — the emeritus
archbishop remains a controversial and divisive figure.

Weakland, who came to Milwaukee in 1977, had been an
intellectual luminary and influential leader of the Benedictine
Order under Pope Paul VI. He was consulted on liturgical
changes at the highest levels in Rome. He championed the role
of women in the church and led the drafting of the American
bishops' pastoral letter on the economy, tenets of which
are being echoed by Pope Francis nearly 30 years later.

But Weakland's influence waned as Pope John Paul II
shifted the church to the right.

In Milwaukee, he initiated a wave of church closings and
mergers — decisions seen by some as ruthless, by others
as overdue and courageous. And near the end of his tenure in
Milwaukee, he shepherded a radical remodeling of the interior
of the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, the episcopal see
of the archdiocese.

He retired in 2002 in a spectacular fall from grace after
acknowledging that he used $450,000 in church funds in a failed
attempt to silence a former male lover who years later accused
him of date rape.

Friends and supporters say the exile is, for the most
part, self-imposed. Weakland withdrew from public ministry,
they said, shortly after his resignation, when a group of
parents threatened to pull their children from their
confirmations at a large suburban parish after learning
Weakland had been invited to take part.

"He did not want the sacraments to be
disruptive," said Cooper. "He did not want to be a
source of scandal and division."

In recent years, Weakland has spent his time reading,
playing the piano, attending the symphony, traveling. Neighbors
in his condo complex take him shopping, according to Cooper.

"Right now, he can take care of himself, but
he's worried about getting too weak to do those
things," said Cooper, explaining Weakland's decision
to leave.

The return to Latrobe will be a homecoming of sorts. St.
Vincent's is the abbey where Weakland's mother sent him
to begin his seminary studies in 1940 at the age of 13. The
oldest Benedictine monastery in the United States, it offered
him entrée into a world of power and privilege far
removed from his hardscrabble childhood in rural Pennsylvania.

It is expected that he will live out the rest of his life
there.

Here in Milwaukee, Weakland's influence on the
church, both local and global, will likely be debated for
years.

He was, depending on one's perspective, erudite or
arrogant. An architect of progressive reform, or the embodiment
of the "liberal excesses" wrought by Vatican II. An
unwitting accomplice in a system that did not understand the
psychosexual development of priests and the long-term effects
of sex abuse on children, or a calculating criminal who placed
the interests of the church over those of its victims.

"What I admire most is that he spoke with substance.
What he had to say really came from a deep place," said
Father Steven Avella, a Marquette University professor of
history, whose second volume on the history of the local
archdiocese, due out this year, will include a forward by
Weakland.

"He was a man I was proud to work for," Avella
said. "I would never, even with his troubles, turn my back
on him."

Many abuse survivors believe Weakland owes them one
courtesy before leaving Milwaukee. Critics, including
survivors, have lobbied the archdiocese for years to strip
Weakland's name and likeness from the Cathedral of St. John
the Evangelist downtown, including a bronze image in bas-relief
that depicts Weakland shepherding small children.

Pilmaier says she tried repeatedly to meet with Weakland
after learning of her son's abuse but was told by the
prelate that she "could not be trusted." The
experience, she says, has robbed her of her faith, and a church
that she loved and worked for for much of her life.

"It meant so much to me, and they have made a
mockery of it all," said Pilmaier, who believes Weakland
should demand the removal of the bronze.

"Why doesn't he ask to have that removed?"
she said. "He's not a person who could be trusted to
protect those children around him."